


Footprints in the Sand

by thespicyricey



Series: Siren Songs [2]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Nymphs & Dryads, Past Character Death, Romance, Sirens, is 'the main character almost dies cus he's a moron' a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28399146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespicyricey/pseuds/thespicyricey
Summary: Yifan isn't quite sure how he's managed to fall for someone who is not all the way human, but he's not exactly complaining. After all, he is the only one who can see them.
Relationships: Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao/Wu Yi Fan | Kris
Series: Siren Songs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079930
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Footprints in the Sand

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to The Nixie's Song (that I totally didn't forget that I wrote and forget to publish, whoops!)

“It’s sunny _and_ it’s raining.”

Delighted, the nymph coos happily as raindrops fall into his open, awaiting palms, as the sun beats down on him despite the leaking of its surrounding clouds. “I love sunshowers,” he giggles, the sound light and airy and tinkling as Yifan watches him through squinted eyes, the nymph’s pale hair rustling in the breeze. 

“What does it mean when there is a sunshower?” Yifan asks him. “If, when it rains, it means that a nixie is sad, and if, when it is sunny, it means that a nixie is happy.”

“Well,” the boy says as he pokes at the puddle that has pooled in the cavity of his palm. “Usually, we say that it means a nymph has become self-aware - that is to say, the two most common explanations of that being that perhaps they have used up each of their biological five chances to mate and are now beginning the cycle toward cell deconstruction, or perhaps they have finally crossed the threshold between platonic intimacy and love. Sunshowers mean a nymph has had an emotional epiphany of sorts.”

Beside him, the human lets out a short hum, as though a confirmative noise, and before the boy even knows it, there are warm arms winding around his waist from the back, and his pulse jitters as the human buries his face in the boy’s hair, planting a soft kiss on his head and squeezing him gently. “Does that mean that you’ve fallen in love with me?” Yifan mumbles suggestively next to his ear.

“It might,” the nymph giggles, and Yifan’s arms loosen just slightly as the boy turns his head to meet his gaze. “Would that be okay with you if I did?”

Warmly, Yifan chuckles. “You know I could never complain about that kind of thing. Besides, who else is going to go on long walks on the beach with you? Collecting seashells with you, sleeping in bed with you, leaving footprints in the sand with you.” 

Looking down, the student smiles to himself at the differentiating shapes of their footprints in the soft press of the damp sand, trailing behind them as they go, and Yifan doesn’t think he will ever truly grow tired of how precious he finds the difference in size between their prints - the nymph’s small and childlike, and Yifan’s large and long. With each step, Yifan likes to think of it as another threshold that they have crossed and another obstacle they have overcome - or even, perhaps, another day to be together, and if that were the case, Yifan would walk miles in each direction until his legs could no longer work.

“Yifan,” the boy says, and Yifan grins and cocks his head, simply shit-eating and gaudy at best. “I will be waiting for you the same way that you will be waiting for me, for I am holding you to your promise to stay until you fall in love with me. Remember - you promised. You can’t back out now, human.”

“Who said I was going to back out?” His boyfriend asks kindly. “You said I was your one and only remaining chance at mating, right? Of course, that only means that I have to make good on my word and prove to the universe that I am the one you deserve, because - after all, I am the one who decoded all of your little riddles.”

Giggling, the nymph stops where he’d been walking among the froth of the seafoam, his little webbed toes sunken into the soft plush of the wet sand and dusted with individual particles that glimmer in the sun, and takes one of his boyfriend’s large, soft hands, turns it upside-down to present to him a broad palm, and dumps the little shells that he’s collected into his boyfriend’s hand. When Yifan glances down at what he’s been gifted, he sees that he’s been handed several small, pretty tellins, each one peachy-pink in color and relatively the same size, and as he jostles the shells around a little bit, he also sees a few mollusk shells as well as a medium-sized clamshell. “Are these mine now?” He asks with a cheeky little grin, and the boy’s cheeks freckle beneath the summer sun. 

“Not quite,” the nymph grins at him, a content little expression that exemplifies pure self-peace. “I want to convey something to you, Yifan. The tellins are each a part of me - my body, my soul, my mind, and my heart. The mollusks represent my lives - four of them, each one has passed before I found you - the clamshell, which represents you. Large enough to hold all of these parts of me and to have room left over even after that. You, Yifan, are my captor and my new home, and for that, I thank you, and thereafter, I would like to tell you that I love you.”

Far too philosophical for his heart to take, Yifan’s countenance cracks, softening and weakening, for he is not strong enough to resist delivering care to such a wholesome being. Absolutely lovelorn, Yifan rushes forward and gathers the boy in his arms, thankful to the very bottom of his heart to have found such a wonderful partner. “You’re so fucking cute, Tao,” he whispers close to the boy’s ear, which pinks beneath the heat of his breath, and he feels comforting pressure on his sides as little hands embrace him, in turn. “I promise, for as long as I live, that I will never let you run away again. I’ll always be here when you have nowhere else to go. I promise.”

Overjoyous and content, the boy smiles kindly and lays his head on the man’s shoulder, nuzzling his cheek into the soft swath of his partner’s sweater, wholesome and warm as their hearts connect. As they embrace, the delicate showers finally let up and the sunlight begins to lighten, bearing warmth and heat down on affectionate shoulders. “You’d better stop being so happy,” Yifan comments softly where the boy is wrapped into him, his head on the man’s shoulder and his thumbs on Yifan’s side, “or you’re going to cause a drought.”

Finding the statement humorous, the boy giggles and leans back to press a soft kiss to his partner’s waiting lips, and Yifan finds himself not minding if their town were to drop into exponential drought as long as he got to see the nymph smile. 

* * *

  
One day, Yifan decides to invite him out to a picnic. The nymph, being a long-time spirit of the water and only such, had never even _heard_ the word picnic before.

Naturally, he gives the boy the option of choosing where they will have their midday brunch picnic, and naturally, the boy opts to have it on the breadth of the beach where he resides. Considerate by nature, Yifan chooses not to ask him which foods he often enjoys, for the nymph probably has little, if not absolutely no experience consuming and enjoying popularized human cuisine, and decides that rather than make it a guessing game, he will have to have the boy try new things and from there, make his own biases about which foods he likes and which foods he dislikes. 

So, as the boy watches him from comfortable proximity, Yifan stretches out the plaid blanket that he designated as their base sheet to eat on, and the nymph realizes a little too late that the wind is having none of it, and lurches forward to begin to weigh the corners down with nearby rocks as well as Yifan’s lunch basket. Then, deeming the blanket immobile enough, the boy makes a spot for himself on the left half of the space, crossing his legs beneath him as his chestnut tunic pools over his upper thighs and over the little black shorts that stop above his knees. Yifan quite likes the way he matches what he wears, for everything he wears seems to match the little black mollusks in his hair, as always, and although he had never previously found tunics to be all that attractive, he begins to not be able to see them without thinking immediately of the nymph and his icy eyes and his mollusk-decorated hair that smells commonly of sea salt. 

“What are we doing?” The boy asks him with a genuine childlike curiosity, and Yifan offers him a kind grin as he begins to remove containers of food from his lunch basket and thereafter, a set of silverware cloth-wrapped for cleanliness. 

It does not come as a surprise that the nymph has likely never had lunch, nor ever heard the word lunch before, but Yifan is impartial and does not at all mind introducing him to the commonality of human life. “We’re going to have lunch,” Yifan tells him with a sweetened simper, and the boy’s lips round in curiosity. “Lunch is what we call our midday meal. So, we are going to eat.”

Now that he thinks about it, Yifan has never really seen the boy eat before, so he is, therefore, unsure if the nymph eats three balanced meals the way humans do, or if perhaps he doesn’t need to eat much at all - which, in that case, Yifan would love to know how the boy’s metabolism works, if it runs more along the lines of that of a human or perhaps is slower akin to that of hypernatural hibernation mammals, such as bears. Nevertheless, the boy’s eyes brighten at the mention of food, and Yifan safely assumes that he does, in fact, eat. 

Meticulous, he uncaps each container of food that he had brought and allows the boy to gaze at all of them with widened eyes, likely never having seen cooked food before, and it brings a smile to Yifan’s face as he then hands the boy a bottle of water to drink a napkin for his messes. “Don’t be shy,” he tells him encouragingly. “You can dig in.”

Yifan, as it turns out, has far too high of expectations for someone who had never thoroughly been exposed to human mannerisms, as he watches in surprised dismay as the boy immediately digs in - _literally_ , at that, as he reaches forward to dip his fingers into the container of pan-fried shellfish laid in a sweet, spiced sauce, and Yifan’s jaw drops as the boy messily brings one of the prawns to his lips and bites down with sauce-soaked fingers.

Right. Water nymphs probably don’t use modernized utensils. 

Chuckling, Yifan reaches out to stop him, moving forward with a clean napkin as the boy suckles the remaining sauce off of his fingers, and delicately pulls his hand away from his mouth and begins to clean it off with the napkin as though he were teaching an infant to wipe their hands. “Okay, well,” Yifan laughs, smiling wholesomely, “not like that.”

Embarrassed, the boy’s irises dull as Yifan cleans his hand, and it becomes evident that this animalistic, unmannered nature of his is the only thing he knows, and Yifan gives him plentiful pity. “Can I not eat?” The boy asks, and Yifan is comforting as he hands the boy a bamboo fork and spoon.

“We use these to eat,” Yifan explains, and the nymph’s eyebrows furrow as he analyzes the items in his hands with delicate, pale fingers. “It’s a lot cleaner and more sanitary, too. Here.” Helpfully, Yifan reaches forward and straightens the fork in the boy’s left hand, and delicately wraps each of his fingers over top and beneath the handle of the fork so as to show him how to hold it, his thumb pressed against the long ridge. “This is a fork,” he says, and the nymph’s eyes turn wide and bright as he stares at the pronged utensil. “So, when you want to eat, you take it - and you press it down like this.”

Amazed, the nymph watches with flushed cheeks as his partner guides his own hand to press the prongs of the instrument into one of the sauced prawns, before lifting it into the open air for the nymph to see - and with an impressed coo, the nymph analyzes it closer. How did he get the prawn to stay on the little pegs like that? How does it not fall off if he were to tip it sideways, or even upside-down?

“It’s a lot cleaner than eating with your hands,” Yifan grins as he intakes a spoonful of seasoned rice. “Go on - try it.”

Bravely, he does, and he quite likes it, and Yifan discovers that the nymph has quite a taste for prawns and chili oil, finishing the entire container all by himself and without so much as even a flinch over the spice. Impressed, Yifan kisses him on the temple and resumes eating. 

* * *

  
“I never did get to ask you - where do you get your clothes if you’re, like, half-water fairy and half-merman?”

The boy is sat on Yifan’s bed with two of his nautili traversing slowly and timely across each of his palms, one in each hand, and he giggles airily as their little legs tickle his tender skin. “They wash up,” he says with a curled grin as the crabs make their way to his inner knuckles and it really begins to tickle. “Oftentimes, clothing doesn’t necessarily deteriorate in saltwater if it’s newer, so sometimes I find them and I bring them to shore and dry them off so I can wear them. Then, when I find a style that I like, I can actually siphon discarded cells on the clothing from whoever may have worn them, and replicate them from other pieces. Like magic, I guess.” 

Lips pursing, Yifan nods, for it does make sense for clothing to get lost in the ocean. Plus, it makes even more sense as to why the boy’s shirts often meet his upper thighs, but Yifan has never before had an issue with such. “Sounds very convenient,” he nods his head, deciding to sit down on the bed next to him with ample space between the two of them, unsuggestive and merely peaceful. “You don’t really dress the way someone from this generation would - I thought you were a peasant or a merchant the first time I saw you.”

“Oh,” the boy comments softly. “That’s just my preferred way of dress - I like tunics and tie-pants, for I think they’re roomy and comfortable.”

He supposes that someone like him, who had never had a need or a reason for human paid labor, would not have their own boudoir or their own collection of clothes, and that the nymph as a frugal being, likely discards of or hides the clothes he has worn and is done with. “Is that why you don’t wear things like jeans?” He asks, and the boy nods beside him. 

“I think they’re too tight and too heavy,” he complains through pursed lips, reaching out for one of his partner’s hands and very delicately aligning their fingers so the small crab will traverse from his knuckle onto the soft of his boyfriend’s fingers. Although peculiar, Yifan has no complaints about the boy’s taste in clothing, for his trousers often hang wide-legged and low and his tunics often rise in the daytime breeze. 

“Speaking of washing things,” Yifan mentions after a few moments of letting the small crab trickle its way across the curvature of his palm. Smoothly and slowly, he stands from the bed and turns on his heel to look down at the boy, bright-eyed and curious as to why his partner had stood up so suddenly. Then, the man reaches out and takes the second crab from the boy’s webbed fingers and adds it to his occupied hand, as well, and allows the two crabs to intermingle as he says, “If you’re going to live among humans, then you should probably learn to bathe like humans, too. I’m gonna give you a shower.”

Soft-minded and inexperienced, the boy’s lips round at the mention of the new activity. “A shower?” He asks. “What’s that?”

“It’s something we humans do in order to get clean,” Yifan explains gently. “It involves getting undressed and washing in some water, which means you are going to need to take your friends out of your hair.”

Then, the boy’s eyes dull and Yifan watches as they go glossy when he raises both of his small, slightly-webbed hands, and trails jittering fingertips across the salted locks of his hair where the miniature creatures comfortably reside like beads along woven threads. “But,” he pouts, whining softly with a haze of misunderstanding along his waterlines, “but my crabs.”

As though parting with a long-time friend, the nymph looks heartbroken, his eyes sallow and his eyebrows curved at the thought of having to part with the nautili, and it occurs to Yifan that the boy may never have removed them from his hair once before in his life and quite possibly does not understand that parting with them is simply temporary. Considering that Yifan has nowhere to put the creatures without having them dehydrate and starve, void of the boy’s spiritual nutrients when detached, he can’t exactly blame him for not understanding. 

In the end, Yifan buys him a fish tank-style saltwater aquarium to keep his nautili in and lines it with beach sand so they can efficiently burrow and stand without drowning. Additionally, in the end, Yifan learns that the nymph does not particularly enjoy showers as they remind him far too much of the summer rain, but that he does, in fact, enjoy bubble baths, and that he is especially ticklish along the webbing between his fingers. 

_Good to know_ , Yifan thinks to himself as he hides a satisfied grin and gently massages the nymph’s scalp as he soaps up his hair. Good to know.

* * *

  
“Fan-di,” his sister says as she knocks on his door before entering, and Yifan glances up from his book where he’s prostrate on his bed as the nymph snuggles into his side instinctively, worried that at any given moment, Yifan’s sister would suddenly be able to see him. Nevertheless, her eyes remain stoic as she leans against the truss of Yifan’s door frame. “Yuan-di and I are going to the market while dad goes to work - did you want to come with?”

Yifan, with a shy little water nymph unmated and therefore invisible nestled against his left half where he had been listening to the man read his book softly to him, shakes his head, then, and the book slackens. “I have plans today already,” he tells her with a placid expression. “I’m going out today with a friend.”

As though not having expected that Yifan would have friends, Bingbing’s place on the doorframe straightens and her hands linger aimlessly against the wood as her lips round into a circle. “You are? Which friend?”

He has to stop himself from replying immediately out of habit as the name _Tao_ flashes at the forefront of his tongue, for he’s absolutely certain his sister has neither heard the boy’s name from Yifan’s lips nor has she given him even so much as a lick of a belief that Yifan’s imaginary friend is more than they seem. “I’m hanging out with Kevin,” is what he decides to go with, a smooth lie across the soft of his tongue. “We’re seeing a movie later because his girlfriend dumped him a few days ago, so I offered to hang with him to help talk to him about it and make him feel better, and also to give him some company.”

It’s not a total lie, for his best friend Kevin had been dating a girl named Hyoyeon for several months now, and although never having met her, Bingbing has heard about her from Yifan’s own stories regarding hanging out with his best friend, as Kevin had been quite infatuated with her. Nevertheless, their break-up had never occurred, a heat-of-the-moment lie to excuse why Yifan has last-minute plans. 

“Hyoyeon really dumped him?” His sister asks with surprise in her eyes, widening them as they gloss over. “Oh. That’s such a shame, Kevin is really a sweet guy. Okay, well, do you want anything from the market while Yuan-di and I are there? We can pick you up something.”

“I think we need more skirt steak,” Yifan tells her casually, and the nymph glances up at his partner curiously, surprised at how calm he is managing to remain. “Mom made the last one the other day. Oh, we also need dark soy sauce and oyster sauce while you’re out. I think we need vermicelli, too, and scallions.”

“I have vermicelli and scallions on the shopping list already,” she says. “Alright, I’ll make sure to get extra skirt steak just for you, Fan-di, but you can’t eat it all in a week, you glutton. Tell Kevin I said hi, too, alright?”

Yifan agrees and waves her off as she leaves his room and closes the door behind her, clicking softly back into place in the doorframe, and the nymph’s shy little hands move along Yifan’s shoulder as he lets out the breath he had been holding.

“How are you so good at that?” The boy asks him quietly, and Yifan looks down at him where he’s nestled against his arm with his cheek pressed to the round of the man’s shoulder. “The lying, I mean.”

“I live with siblings,” Yifan snorts. “Lying comes naturally when you have siblings because they’ll try to frame you for things you had nothing to do with just so they can get themselves out of trouble. Besides, I’m not really hanging out with Kevin today, and he didn’t really break up with his girlfriend, either. I needed an excuse.”

Lips rounding, the nymph’s eyes brighten. “Really? You don’t have plans today?”

He knows very well that the nymph has no qualms against spending a day at home with him, simply curled up in Yifan’s bed as though there were no better place for him to be, yet he does, additionally, very much enjoy walks on the beach with him in bare feet beneath the warm summertime sun, so the way the boy’s words suddenly begin to lilt as though in hope does not come at all as a surprise, and the inflection makes Yifan grin. “No, I don’t have plans today,” he grins, slipping his bookmark into the inside of the pages before setting his book down on the bed and wrapping an arm around the nymph to huddle him slightly closer. “Why? Would you like for me to have plans today?”

Bashfully, the boy’s cheeks flush rosy as his lips purse in the shadow of a pout before he says, “Well, I was thinking we could go down to the beach today. I want to show you something.”

Yifan is no stranger to the string of words _I want to show you something_ , as each and every time they have come up in conversation, it often equates to the boy drenching him with more riddles in order to figure out more important information about him, akin to the way he had him guess his birthdate and additionally, his name. Yet the words could also mean more in terms of a slightly more shrouded topic, as though the boy wants to show him another feature of himself that would normally frighten or entrance normal humans. Yifan, on the other hand, holds only curiosity and tendrils of excitement as he says, “Oh? What would you like to show me?”

The boy tisks, then, laying a barely-there slap upon the thick of the man’s upper chest through his pigeon-gray sweater. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you what it was, now would it? Humans like you are so silly and so impatient.”

“Alright, alright,” Yifan laughs, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to the boy’s lips as fingertips trail delicately along the hollow of his cheek. “We’ll go to the beach. Let me get dressed first into something lighter, ‘cause it’s fucking hot out.”

Snidely, the nymph smiles from his spot on the bed as Yifan stands and begins to rummage through his boudoir before the boy says, “You’re finally going to wear something other than a sweater and jeans, aren’t you?”

As a familiar, tinkling little laugh follows, Yifan sighs and rolls his head back in disdain, as his boyfriend makes fun of him and his commonplace method of dress. “Listen, it’s too hot for a sweater and jeans, okay? God, I’ll wear something different, _sheesh_.”

Silently, the boy watches him in his quiet and watches as he switches to searching his drawers, and the moment the nymph catches the sight of a pair of what Yifan calls _underpants_ , he realizes that this is not what he had originally meant. “Wait,” he interjects, and the human glances back with his dark hair hanging handsomely along the sides of his forehead, having grown relatively quickly since mid-spring, and he drops the underpants onto the top of his dresser as the boy’s expression tenses. “Do you have any swimming clothes?”

Not expecting the question, Yifan’s brow knits. “What, like a bathing suit?”

Oh. Is that what humans call them? The nymph’s brow stresses for just a second as though not sure if _bathing suit_ was the correct terminology that he had been looking for. Quietly, he nods his head, and he watches as Yifan shuffles over to a different drawer, presumably to look for a bathing suit. 

“If you wanted me to go swimming with you,” Yifan glances over with a content little smile, “all you had to do was ask. I wouldn’t have said no.”

It’s not exactly that, for the boy does still have a trick up his sleeve, or two. Yes, he supposes that they could call it simply swimming, for Yifan doesn’t exactly have to know what the nymph has planned before the time comes to actually announce it. “Bring swimming equipment with you, too,” he says, stoically pressing his lips together in a small grin as his partner bids him several parting words before he heads into his attached bathroom to change, which had long ago been disclosed as for the boy’s own comfort and privacy, as Yifan didn’t exactly think he would be extremely open about having someone that he had feelings for strip stark naked directly in front of him. 

Excited for their plans for the day, the nymph slinks from his spot on the bed and lifts his legs onto Yifan’s nightstand as he winds his hands around the lip of the man’s window, pulling it open in preparation to head outside while Yifan would be saying goodbye to his siblings. Although knowing very well that he could slink around Yifan’s house like some kind of poltergeist, it still grants him anxiety each time he does it, and for his own comfort, he enjoys using the window and additionally enjoys climbing up trees to reach it. 

When he successfully slides a leg over the ledge of the window, then, the man comes back into the room with a colorful towel thrown over his shoulder, likely to take with them to the beach should he want to rapidly dry off. Meeting those pretty blue eyes before the boy heads outside to wait for him to say goodbye to his family, the boy offers him a little smile, and Yifan’s cheeks flush rosy as he smiles back, visually smitten and as precious and handsome as ever, and the nymph’s heartbeat skips. “I’ll wait for you,” the nymph tells him. “I promise.”

Symbolically, it means a lot for nixies to promise things to humans, especially when in regards to the states of their being. As though knowing that very well, the human’s expression falters for just a split-second before he reaches out to gently meet the boy’s lips with his own in a wet little kiss, his thumb brushing the coarse, salted hairs at the boy’s nape. “I’ll come down when I’m done,” Yifan nods. “I promise.”

As though having linked together through a pact or a lifelong promise, the nymph smiles, his cheeks pinking as he watches the human leave his bedroom with exposed legs and a colorful towel that flashes him with shades of fuchsia and violet as well as shades of orange and scarlet, and lays a webbed hand on his upper chest as his pulse speeds.

* * *

  
“I want to show you something.”

Yifan, being the ever-curious fellow he is as well as the devout partner that he is, holds no qualms about being shown new things especially when in regards to the boy and his fancies. Knowing how much the nymph likely knows and has witnessed that Yifan would never be able to experience as a land-thriving human, he finds himself yearning to soak up new information about him like a dried sponge, as the boy pulls him patiently farther down the stretch of the soft sand and toward the frothing tide. The sun is hot today, beating down on them as Yifan’s slightly-tanned shoulders resonate against the light and the boy’s hair sways in the unforgiving breeze. 

Yifan expects only minimally from him, perhaps given permission for Yifan to supervise him while he swims, or even for Yifan to help him search for seashells underwater which isn’t exactly unlikely. Yet, as they approach the water, the boy’s hand lingers delicately on his wrist as their bare feet meet the soft rush of the seafoam. When the nymph turns to face him, then, his eyes are bright and glossy, as though hopeful, and Yifan wonders if this may be more than a simple day out at the beach to go swimming. 

“What do you want to show me?” Yifan asks him as fingertips curtain across the width of his wrist. “Though I should warn you if it’s something indecent, I don’t think here in public is the place to show that kind of thing. I’d rather we go back to my house for that.”

“No,” the nymph replies quickly, turning on his heel as he faces his partner in the shadows of the background sunlight. Softly, slowly, his fingertips leave the comfort of the human’s skin as he pulls his hand back, and then with swift movements, takes hold of his waistband beneath his tunic and drops his pants. 

Instinctively, Yifan shouts out in surprise and covers his eyes as he turns his head away, absolutely not willing enough to get intimate in a place as public as this. “What are you doing?” He complains as his heartbeat skips, unsure of where this is going. “I know you said you wanted to show me something, but this isn’t what I thought you meant!”

The rustling of clothing returns and he can only manage a simple peek through the cracks of his fingers to confirm that yes, the boy is once again stark naked as though it were only natural to be unclothed, and Yifan’s cheeks flush as he averts his eyes from behind the barrier of his hand. 

“Yifan,” he hears, the boy’s voice tensed as though he were whining, and the man’s hand lowers just a smidge to be able to look overtop the wall of his fingers. “Do you trust me?”

At that, the boy’s irises turn icy, and Yifan’s hand slackens and lowers as he finds himself symbolically entranced. He has never thought about the threshold of trust that he contains for the nymph - for, despite even the day he had made it pour out of fear that Yifan had been using him, he had never betrayed his partner and had never given him a reason to worry. Quite the contrary, Yifan has actually found him to be one of the most thoroughly honest people that he has ever crossed paths with, never lying but simply shrouding the truth for his own safety, and Yifan can respect that immensely. Sometimes, being too up-front with self-information can make it seem false, but the boy is simply scared at all times; scared that Yifan may run with all of this information and sell it to a prestigious research center and have him dissected like a cephalopod to see what makes him different than normal humans, to see why his internal sexual organs are gender-neutral and universal, or why it is that he can breathe when underwater when normal humans cannot. Yifan cannot possibly break the trust that the boy has for him to this extent, for he would not be here involving himself in such human matters if he did not trust Yifan, so when he thinks about it thoroughly - “Yes,” he says, for he does trust the nymph. 

As though pleased that the human does not think of him as a monster, the boy smiles beneath the glow of the sun, his cheeks round and flourished in peachy tones. In all of his naked beauty, the boy is exactly that - beautiful and eye-catching beneath the sun, as it reflects off of the silver tones among the cool blues, and Yifan truly does not think he has ever met anyone quite as alluring as the boy who stands before him. 

“I want to show you something in the water,” the nymph says as he begins to take steps backward, his feet brushing through the seafoam as his calves collide with the waves, splitting abruptly against his skin and gurgling in along the sand. “I want to show you what it’s like to be me.”

Then, Yifan’s eyes widen. “To be you?” He asks softly. “What does that mean?”

“You will see,” the nymph promises him with the shadow of a grin. “Come.”

Yifan watches, breaths bated, as the boy turns on his heel and presents him with his naked backside, which makes the man glance away out of sheer respect for the boy’s privacy before the nymph wades about thigh-deep into the rough waters, and dives. It’s as elegant as any other dive Yifan has ever seen, the boy’s legs coming up to sink below the surface as his body propels forward. 

What worries him, however, is that the boy never resurfaces. Of course, like a water nymph, it would make perfect sense for the boy to be able to stay beneath the surface of the water for extended periods of time - hours, maybe, at that - but what if something happened? Yifan had not been forewarned that the boy would be going deep into the water before he entered - what if he hit his head on something?

Plenty worried, Yifan discards his towel and his shirt and follows him quickly into the water, the tide frigid against his ankles and he hisses instinctively as the cold chills him to the bone. It’s too early in the summer and therefore, too little of time for the oceans to have warmed yet. With his swimming goggles dangling around his wrist, Yifan wades deeper as the cold tide licks angrily against the muscles along his abdomen, and he shivers as he tries to find where the nymph went. “Tao?” He calls out in worry, unsure of what game they’re playing here. 

He wonders, after several seconds with no response and not even so much as bubbles rising to the top and popping as they reach their destination, if the nymph wants him to come down below the surface with him. So, with slightly-trembling fingers, he fastens the goggles to his head and over his eyes and begins to swim out farther toward deeper water where the waves birth and where the tide calms. “Tao!” He shouts out in a garbled tone as the water begins to rush around his neck and his chin as his feet leave the comfort of the sandbar below and he swims in the bottomless water. 

Then, something brushes against his ankle and he shouts out in surprise, attempting to lurch backward away from it, when the something wraps around his ankle and yanks, and he chokes on the air around him as he’s pulled briskly under. 

His first instinct is panic, that a shark or something of the like has gotten hold of him and he thrashes and screams out as he attempts to worm away from the hold. Then - he is given a brief moment of allowance to come up to the surface for air before he is pulled down again - and this time, he actually manages to open his eyes long enough to see what has a hold on him. 

It’s the nymph, a long, pale arm attached to him with a hand around his ankle as his skin blurs beneath the surface of the water, and Yifan’s eyes widen slightly as he notices that the boy’s waist trails prettily into a long, small-scaled fish’s tail, gunmetal gray at his groin which melts into a slightly unsaturated cobalt blue down the length where the saturation is at its brightest along his tailfins. Beneath the water, the boy’s hair is lively, voluminous in the swath of the submerged weightlessness, the nautili shells along the tendrils floating prettily in decoration. 

Trustworthy, the boy reaches forward among the slow push of the water, wraps a webbed hand around Yifan’s wrist, and smiles reassuringly, promising him silent trust. Then, Yifan watches in amazement as the boy’s arm muscles coil with a strength he didn’t know the nymph had, and he swiftly drags Yifan close to him with a strong pull against the non-gravitational water. Yifan honestly expects the boy to pull him close for an awkward submerged kiss which sounds romantic in theory, but is probably going to be rather uneventful because Yifan likes to breathe with his face. 

What takes him by surprise, however, is when the boy’s irises pulse in color and begin to glow bright white within the water’s blur, and with a deep breath inward with no hindrance of his water intake, the boy leans close to him, their faces mere centimeters apart, and rounds his lips as he begins to blow outward.

Out of sheer panic for needing to breathe, his lungs beginning to ache and burn within his chest, Yifan had begun to pull against the boy’s hold out of a need to return to the surface. As he waits for a response, however, his eyes widen as he watches as something begins to materialize from the stream of self-produced air that the boy blows out, not at all fractalizing or separating into bubbles and rather lingering among the water’s blur as though controlled. He watches, breaths very limited, as it begins to form one whole bubble, glistening white and wholly transparent, and when the boy opens his eyes so as to let the blueness return to them, he lifts both webbed hands and wraps them around the sides of the bubble and pushes it with gentle motions until it wraps itself comfortably around Yifan’s head and neck.

Sensing his panic, the boy motions with both hands for him to intake a breath, showing the rhythmic rise of his own chest to coax the man into doing it himself, and unable to wait any longer for air, Yifan cracks and gasps out in desperation, precious air filling his lungs. 

He glances up in surprise, wholly having expected to ingest a lungful of water and suffocate and drown, yet his insides lurch as he realizes that the nymph has essentially made him his own air pocket, a controlled bubble that lingers around him and allows him to breathe normally, and his heartbeat skips as he realizes that the boy had been so thoughtful so as to take into account the fact that Yifan cannot breathe in the water, unlike him.

Seeing as how his human partner has begun to unwind and his worry has begun to lessen, the nymph smiles, his eyes glowing as they control the bubble. 

_You can hear me, can’t you?_

Not having expected it, the man’s eyes widen behind the transparent glaze of his goggles. Did the boy just speak to him without actually speaking? Confused, the human’s eyebrows draw downward as he finds himself confused as to how to do that himself. Wordlessly, he nods, breathing comfortably in his own air pocket. 

When the boy had spoken to him, it had sounded like it was inside Yifan’s own mind, the same way his siren call had seemed like it was something that he was more so imagining than actually experiencing, and Yifan had convinced himself that this was why nobody else seemed to be able to hear it. Is this the same concept - that Yifan is just simply a chosen one who can hear the boy in every form of his speech expressions? 

As though reading his mind, he hears the boy respond. _Sirens are telepathic_ , is what he says. _I can hear your thoughts in this nonhuman form, and as my mate, you can, therefore, hear mine._

Enthralled by the new discovery, Yifan finds himself fervently curious as to how to respond himself. Does he just think what it is that he wants to say? Do his thoughts translate into telepathic speech? _Yes_ , is what he hears in response, and it solidifies his belief that the boy is essentially just reading his mind. Not really feeling like chatting about it here, Yifan decides that he will ask him about it later. 

_I want to show you something_ , the nymph thinks to him. _There’s something you need to see._

Swiftly, the boy begins to swim away, his body twisting as the muscular structure of his tail flexes behind himself and propels him forward with long sways of its fin, and Yifan is smart to put several feet of distance between them so as to not be hit in the face with the cartilaginous appendage. 

Truth be told, Yifan doesn’t think he has ever swum this much or this far in his entire life, and it begins to feel as though he’s been gliding in breaststroke for over an hour as his legs begin to resist and complain of ache, and he decides that this better give him incredible muscle structure for how much work it is to maintain speed with a fucking _merman_. 

_I heard that_ is what he hears ahead of him, and Yifan chuckles to himself as he ignores it and continues to swim.

What he doesn’t fully expect is for the nymph to begin to take him deeper, long forgoing the glassy surface of the water and beginning to delve into cold, dark space that chills him to the bone, and Yifan begins to worry about getting hypothermia from going on this extent of an adventure. Catering to the needs of such a human who cannot withstand the temperatures of the deep ocean, then, the nymph’s hands clench at his sides, and the water surrounding Yifan’s skin begins to warm. _I thought you said you couldn’t water-bend_ , Yifan thinks.

_I can’t. I told you that nixies can control the status of the water, not bend the shape of it._

Fair enough, Yifan decides. It makes sense why the boy can control the rain but can’t siphon the water out of discarded clothing that he finds.

Then, as Yifan can begin to see the seabed and the multicolored corals that emboss it, the boy’s aura changes. Something becomes colder about him, more closed-off and melancholy, and Yifan wonders if this specific area of the water holds unpleasant memories for him. The movements of the boy’s tailfin begin to slow, as though stalling and Yifan’s eyes widen as he realizes that they’re beginning to approach what looks like a wreckage, long stretches of splintered wood encroached upon a mass of what used to be a fishing boat, split cleanly in half down a shredded middle, as though it were intentional, and he follows the merman smoothly down to the side of the boat that rests against the ocean floor.

When Yifan gets there, though, as the merman stills with whitened irises and slotted gills along the sides of his ribs, he notices something very wrong about the wreckage, and his mind begins to fill with staticky white noise. 

There is a corpse among the wreckage, a young man, it seems, mossed over with layers of sea kelp along his gray, blue-tinged skin, where he lays beneath the heap of the half split down the center. Not exactly a fan of explicit death, Yifan turns his head and gags into his bare arm, and he feels the nymph’s eyes on him. _This is what I brought you here to show you_ , is what he hears in the crevices of his mind.

When Yifan glances over, something in his chest pulls as he sees the sadness in the boy’s eyes. The nymph had said that he wanted Yifan to see what it was like to be him, right? What exactly did that implication entail? _What is this, exactly?_ He thinks to himself, hoping that the boy can hear it.

Then, the merman swims forward, his abdomen rolling as his tail sways, and Yifan watches as he carefully curtains himself against the seabed before reaching out and brushing a layer of glazed kelp from the corpse’s face. _My previous mate._

Yifan’s expression falls as he glances back down at the corpse, at the fingertips that trail along its grayed face as though in saddened longing, and the inside of his chest runs cold as the weight of the situation begins to press down on him. _What happened?_ He wonders. 

Sighing, his shoulders dropping, the nymph glances back at him with a sullen expression. _He didn’t love me back, so I had to kill him. I did this. It’s my duty as a cyclic siren._

Oh.

Unsure of how to process it all, Yifan swims closer in order to take the boy’s hand in his in a comforting manner and brings it to his chest to allow the nymph to feel his heartbeat. _It’s alright_ , he promises. _You have me now, so you don’t have to kill anymore._

Tenderhearted, the nymph’s lips curl downward, and Yifan knows that if they were not currently in a body of water that the boy would be crying. The knowledge that this is the life that the nymph had to live each step of the way toward finding his true love really stings, for Yifan cannot imagine the burdening guilt that he must carry for having to take all of these lives simply for not returning his feelings. _Don't you think I’m a monster?_

Pressing his lips together as the moment tenses on, Yifan shakes his head. _You’re not a monster to me. Besides, you said it’s what you were required to do - not what you wanted to do._

Emotional, the nymph shifts his position and leans forward to bury himself in the human’s arms, and Yifan hugs him into his chest as he feels the boy sigh, his torso heaving rhythmically. _It’s not your fault_ , he promises, for it is not as though the boy _chose_ to live this way - what would Yifan have expected, exactly, from a subspecies of human which thrive by means of happiness or death at all times? _You’re still important to me, and you always will be, Tao._

The nymph must be thankful, for he suddenly moves into Yifan’s air bubble to press his lips against the human’s, simply overwhelmed and wanting to be affectionately touched, and while Yifan doesn’t consider himself the most selfless human alive, he definitely values character over morals, for morals can easily change but character requires tedious work. 

_Thank you, Yifan._ Happily, the nymph links their fingers as he lifts himself from the seabed and coaxes his partner into returning to the surface with him. _Thank you._

* * *

  
That night, the boy returns to the beach in order to eat, and Yifan proclaims that he will see him later that night after they separately eat dinner, for the nymph is still not visible and is therefore not circumvented into the family circle to be given a plate at the table. 

In order to remain secretive, Yifan tells them that he had gone swimming today. When asked if he found anything and if the water had been relentlessly cold or not, Yifan is passive and casual and tells them that he had found a horseshoe crab but had let it be, for he is not the type to steal the ocean’s creatures for his own consumer gluttony. 

“The lab has us doing an oceanography unit currently,” his father tells him as Yifan stabs his spoon into his sauced rice and sausage, spicy along his tongue in a way that makes Yuan cough and thereafter, he reaches for his melon milk. “So, I hope you don’t mind, but I took those shells off of your desk to bring to the lab.”

The record in his mind scratching, Yifan’s teeth click against the spoon in his mouth as his gaze flares and his heart drops, for surely his father must be joking. “You did _what_?” He asks briskly, taken aback. “I didn’t tell you that you could take those!”

“Fanfan, relax,” his sister tries to calm him as she sips on her glass of water. “You can find more shells tomorrow.”

He shakes his head, the spoon in his hand slackening as his insides run cold. Those were his boyfriend’s shells, all of the tellins and the cream-colored augers having been laid out on Yifan’s desk, for the boy had been playing with them a few nights ago and had been showing them to his crabs when he’d come home with pocketfuls of new shells to add to the collection, scallop shells and handfuls of whelks and cockles smaller than the one Yifan wears around his neck at every given moment. He had been so excited to show him his new discoveries and had been excited to let his crabs try to pick new shells, for the boy had been recently enjoying delving into new colors for his hair decorations, including speckled white-and-browns as well as muted dark blues. “No, you don’t understand. Those weren’t for you to take.”

He has no idea how the boy would react to knowing that all of his shells were suddenly gone, but the thought only proves to sadden him. 

“Well,” his father says with a little sigh, “I can try to ask Changmin for them back tomorrow - we’re not demolishing them or anything, we’re merely using them for study. Would you like them back?”

“If you can, yeah,” Yifan shakes his head in disbelief. This is going to be hell to explain to his boyfriend, for he knows that it would only make him cry. 

“Do you want me to come to the beach with you tomorrow to help you look for more?” Yuan offers, and Yifan’s insides cool just a little, for his younger brother and the nymph are very much alike in their behaviors and their morals, both still sweet and childlike while having a moral maturity about them. “I’m really good at looking for shells, especially underwater - I can hold my breath for a whole minute and forty seconds!”

Nevertheless, Yifan’s mood is shot, and he wants nothing other than to curl up in bed with the boy in his arms and have his apology swallowed in deep, comforting hugs that smell precariously like sunshine and sea salt. “No,” he mumbles, dropping his spoon against his dish before he moves his chair backward and stands from the table, attracting each pair of eyes that linger around the group. “Excuse me,” he pardons himself, turning on his heel and striding up the staircase to his bedroom.

He needs to come up with a plan of action in terms of confrontation - does he tell the boy what happened and be completely honest with him, or does he lie to him for God knows how long it will take to find each and every shell again? Yifan would much rather not lie to him, for that will only show him distrust and will only cause tension between the two of them. Still, how would he react knowing that Yifan didn’t keep his seashells safe?

Behind him, Yuan nudges his elbow into his sister’s side before he whispers, “Is Fan-ge okay?”

“Who knows,” his sister sighs, feeding herself another spoonful of rice. “Leave him be, let him blow off steam.”

Piteous and uncertain, Yuan pouts as he lifts the glass of flavored milk to his lips, for he already misses having his big brother at the table to tell jokes with their sister and to make everything cheery. When Yifan is upset like this, it makes him feel as though something is very wrong, and like it could possibly be one of their faults.

Sighing, he continues to eat his supper, saddened by the realization that Yifan is not coming back down the stairs and telling them that he was just kidding. “I hope he’s okay.”

* * *

  
The rain tonight is astronomically heavy. 

In worry of drought, the nymph had explained to him several days ago that weather events are naturally occurring, and that it is simply that nixies can manipulate them to their advantage - the example he had been given was if it were partly cloudy with some sunshine out, any nearby nymphs could easily stockpile the clouds with water in order to make it rain, and could very easily deepen the pour of current rain in order to make it stop, but do not have the power to necessarily cause a severe national drought. 

However, Yifan had not been expecting a monsoon tonight, nor had he been expecting the unforgiving winds that come with it and nearly tear his umbrella right in half. 

The nymph had not come home, and in this drastic of a weather event, it only serves to make Yifan worry and wonder that something may have happened, and judging by the events that played out that evening at the dinner table, Yifan wouldn’t at all be surprised if the boy had heard his thoughts from afar about letting the shells be stolen against his consent because he had forgotten to put them back in his keepsakes box, and if perhaps the monsoon was his way of expressing his upset over it. 

As he finds, it becomes nearly impossible to shout out to the boy over the howling of the windblown rain, and Yifan begins to worry that the boy may be at sea right now in the midst of a storm like this, as he had not returned home when Yifan had expected him to and, panicking, he had gone down to the beach with dread in his stomach in worry that the boy would possibly get caught in the storm, for what would have happened if it began to thunder?

“ _Tao_!” He shouts out through the wind, absolutely soaked practically from head to toe as an umbrella proves absolutely useless when rainfall is sideways. There is no response, no change in the ferocity of the storm, and Yifan’s heartbeat skips in worry. 

Of course, he knows that the nymph has probably been through plenty of storms in his lifetime and that being in the water during one of them has probably never proven to be an issue, as if it were an issue, the entire ocean would be lifeless by now, right? 

Still, Yifan can’t help but worry as he steps closer to the water. The tide is rougher than he’s ever seen it be, frothing bright white among the dark navy waves, menacing and intimidating, and the thought that the boy could be out in that water truly scares him. The nymph is naive, far too much so for his own good sometimes, so would it really be all that farfetched to assume that it would only take a storm like this to catch him off guard and wash him out to sea? Then again, he is exactly that - a _nymph_ , and would be able to find his way back to shore no matter what, right? Still, Yifan cannot help but worry. 

Then, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye over by the rocks, very much like where he had last found the boy to be during his last episode when he’d run out here and had made it rain in order to cry himself out. Shallow water would be a terrible place to hang out during a storm, and Yifan knows that - so why would the boy be out here, simply waiting out time for the storm to worsen if they’re unlucky?

When he gets closer, toeing off his shoes on the dry sand as he steps into the vicious froth, he notices that it’s clothing, and a shiver races through him as he thinks the worst - that the boy had drowned. 

Rushing forward, he forgoes carrying the umbrella as he tosses it behind him and rushes over to whatever may be floating among the seafoam. _No, no, please let me be wrong. **No**._

Grabbing onto the fabric as waves break roughly against his hips and his waist despite being in the calf-deep water, he feels a little more relieved to find that there is no weight attached to the fabric and that it is merely a discarded shirt, dark in color, soaked, and salt-ridden. Still, that leaves him with absolutely no idea where the boy might be - so if he’s not at home and he’s not at the beach, then where the fuck is he? 

“Tao!” He shouts out, giving one last attempt at trying to see if maybe the boy is walking nearby, maybe even miles down and scavenging the sands for more shells. He tries to think about calling the boy’s name, formulates a thought of asking where he is, figuring that if he may not be in human form right now, then he could very well be underwater and therefore would be able to hear him, right? Then again, he never did get a chance to ask him how far the telepathy carries.

Sighing, he decides that it’s probably better to head back home and see if maybe the boy had arrived while Yifan was gone - after all, maybe he _did_ have plans to come back to Yifan’s house to get out of the rain, but perhaps Yifan had just been so oblivious that he hadn’t known that the boy returned. That’s a possibility, right?

Having come in the water regardless proves, unfortunately, to have been a very bad idea, for the tide suddenly rushes in violently and sweeps Yifan’s feet out from under him, knocking him down beneath the surface of the water, and the punishing force of the undercurrent propels him rapidly forward and head-first into the rocks.

* * *

  
He lurches forward, vomiting out into the open water as everything inside his chest begins to ache, and as he coughs up what is left and watches as it floats away into the water, his hands and arms begin to tremble as the skin in the center of his chest begins to _burn._

Something is wrong.

Something is terribly, terribly _wrong_ \- and his blood runs icy as his heartbeat hammers when he realizes that something is wrong with Yifan.

No, he can’t have this. No, no, no, he can’t lose his last love like this - not like this, not this soon.

Instinctively, he launches himself from the breadth of the sandbar and swims quickly forward, tears prickling at the back of his eyes as his muscles flex and his tail helps to propel him further. No, surely he was imagining things - surely he probably has really bad indigestion or perhaps had been stung by a jellyfish when he hadn’t been looking.

But what if something really did happen?

Yifan was supposed to be at his house waiting for him to arrive, and he was going to, he was, but he wanted to say goodbye to Minseok first and successfully bury him somewhere so as to pay respect. He had plans to meet Yifan once he had finished, so why does he have the irking feeling that something has happened?

Maybe it’s Yifan’s own worry for him that he senses - yeah, that would make sense. Yifan _did_ very well expect him to come back to the house after dinner, but the nymph had been far too curious and emotionally strained to leave Minseok out on the ocean floor like that. 

It had been months, far too long of a span of time in which nobody had sent a search party for him or had even returned to the sea to look for him, and so as to gift him the basic respect that nobody ever did and to make sure his spirit was aware that somebody came back for him and didn’t forget about him, the boy couldn’t resist returning and burying him the way he deserved, for he was a person and people deserve death respect, no matter the kind. He had cried as he lowered Minseok’s gray, frozen, decomposing body into the earth somewhere on the northern coast of Jiangmu Island, where he had met him for the very first time and had apologized and taken all of the blame. 

He can’t handle the thought that he did something to Yifan - or worse, that he _caused_ something to happen to Yifan. He can’t, not when he’d already lost Minseok merely four months ago, and not when he’d just found his final love along the timeline of his final mating cycle. 

Desperate, he breaches the surface and glances toward the shore. Yifan is nowhere to be seen, but even from this far away, he notices things that hadn’t been there before. All the way to his right, there’s an opened umbrella cascading across the sand in the push of the wind, and there are discarded clothes lingering along the sand as though someone - as though _Yifan_ \- had taken them off.

No. Surely he hadn’t tried to go in the water to look for him. Surely Yifan isn’t _that_ stupid - right? 

Then - he feels something resonate deep down inside of him, as though an instinctual pull and he heaves as his breath is stolen right from within his lungs. All over, his head begins to ache as though someone was driving knives into it, and he feels something within his own instinctive blood telling him to move to the left. With tears in his eyes, he dives beneath the surface once more and swims closer to the shore.

No, no.

Blood running absolutely icy, his heartbeat and breaths stutter roughly as he sees exactly what it is that made him sick. His body instantly morphing in his panic, he lurches up from the water, tripping gracelessly over the rush of the tide, and rushes over to the rocks as he shrieks out into the howl of the wind.

“ _ **Yifan**_!!”

No - no, no, no, this is all _wrong._

Sobbing out desperately, shaky little hands stutter as they grab the man by his upper back and turn him over in the water, his skin having glazed over pale and gray, and he instantly panics and begins tugging the man up onto the shore. “No no no,” he mutters repetitively, stammering over his words and trembling through his steps. “No, no, Yifan, you can’t do this,” he cries out, grunting from the effort it takes to bring his body to the dry shore. Surely it has to be fresh - surely there has to be enough time to save him. “Come on, Yifan, _come on._ Wake up.”

Teary-eyed and desperate, the nymph drops to his knees and immediately begins trying to press on the human’s chest through the blur of the tears, sobbing out as he is given no response and is only rewarded with the sight of Yifan looking like a cadaver. “Wake up, Yifan, _please_ ,” he bleats, shaky hands jittering as he tries to revive him. “I know I’m not a human, dammit, but you can’t do this to me!”

Broken, the boy whimpers and snivels as the human’s skin renders cold beneath his fingertips, and the boy realizes that this must have happened because Yifan had been worried about him and had the bright idea of searching for him in the water. Crying heavily, he brings shaky fingertips to the ridges of the human’s lips, barely-parted and puckered from the salt, and he truly has no other option.

Shaky, the boy lays webbed palms across the upper half of the man’s chest, his spread fingers stretching across his breastbone, and he leans forward to press his mouth to his and breathe into him as his irises begin to glow and resonate white, as he forces the water inside of him to move.

 _Come on, Yifan_ , he thinks. _Come back to me. You can’t leave me. Come on. Wake up. You can’t leave. You were supposed to stay with me._

It takes monumental effort but the nymph pulls back with gasping breaths as the human lurches forward and begins to vomit and cough out water onto the damp sand below, and the nymph immediately begins to cry beneath the fall of the rain and wraps long arms around the man’s neck as he comes to. Blearily, the human opens his eyes and registers the world around him in a cloud of coma-induced confusion.

“You stupid _idiot_ ,” the nymph swears against his clammy skin, and he doesn’t linger for long before pulling back and grasping the human’s face in his hands, and his heartbeat finally begins to calm as Yifan’s skin starts to flourish in color once more.

“What happened?” The human asks hoarsely, his throat raw from coughing. “I thought you were supposed to meet me at home. God, my head fucking _hurts_.”

Unwilling to respond, the boy bleats out a wet sob and buries himself in the human’s arms once more, his nose nestles in the man’s neck and his arms coiled around him tightly in fear that he would possibly lose him yet again, and he knows very well that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. “I was coming,” he shakes his head. “You stupid idiot, you… stupid human...”

Coughing once more, Yifan takes in his surroundings. Oh. That’s right. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles into the boy’s hair, “I’m so sorry, Tao, I - I thought you were in the water.”

“Why would you think that?” The nymph mumbles shakily, _angrily_ nearly, into the man’s shoulder, and Yifan can tell from his tone that the boy is so upset that he is actually afraid to show his face. “I told you I would be back, I had to do something first. You could have _died_ if I hadn’t felt that something was wrong, I… I could have _lost_ you…” 

“I’m sorry,” Yifan apologizes, cradling the boy close as he continues to cry and shake as though his world were crumbling around him. “I won’t leave again, I’m so sorry.”

Distraught, the nymph continues to cry for a very long time, and it’s only when the rain finally ceases that Yifan knows that the boy has finished, and when he checks on him to ask for an update, the boy has fallen gently asleep against the thick of his shoulder, as it has become dark and has begun to near his bedtime. Thankful for a second chance at this life, Yifan heaves out a strenuous sigh and gathers the boy in his arms to head home, and makes a promise to himself that he is going to have to learn to trust the nymph a lot more. 

Looking back, Yifan decides to entirely forego his umbrella as he slides on his shoes and begins to walk home with the boy in his arms, for there is no point using protection when the rainfall is sideways. 

* * *

  
That night, the boy doesn’t let him out of his sight for even a second, having to even so much as follow Yifan to the bathroom with headphones in and his hands over his eyes so as to not hear nor see anything that would be less than desirable. Given the events that transpired merely an hour earlier, Yifan cannot say that he blames him, and makes sure that when he offers the boy a drink, that he leaves his bedroom door open so the boy can watch him from the top of the staircase.

When they return to Yifan’s bed to let the events of that day wear off of them through proper rest, Yifan is not at all surprised the way the boy immediately nestles himself right against him as though trying to attach himself to him or even phase _through_ him, and Yifan only returns the favor by wrapping arms around him and reassuring him that everything will be okay.

Still, his father is supposed to return tomorrow with the boy’s shells, so Yifan can only hope that the return of all of his trinkets will help perk him up.

“Are you okay?” He mumbles softly against the boy’s hair, the crabs having been placed in their aquarium tank for the night so that Yifan does not have to feel the solid presses of their shells in his sleep and does not accidentally crush any of them, for Yifan is tall and broad and therefore _heavy_ , and the nymph has the emotional threshold of a developing child and would burst into tears if anything happened to even a single one of his crabs. Comfortingly, Yifan trails soft fingertips in a tingling line up the boy’s spine where he’s pressed into him, his face buried in Yifan’s chest and his hands clutching at the back of his shirt.

“I’m scared,” the boy admits against him, and Yifan isn’t at all surprised. 

“Would you like to talk about it?” He offers tenderly in the darkness of his room, the moonlight filtering prettily in to gift the room in a dull icy blue glow. “I’m still awake - I can talk if you want to.”

“It feels like a dream,” the nymph mumbles, his tone whined and muffled against Yifan’s clothes. “I’m scared that - that I’ll wake up, and… and that this will all have been a dream, and then when I wake up, you’ll be gone. I’m so scared… don’t leave me, Yifan, I… I can’t…” 

“Shh,” Yifan soothes him, whispering against the brush of his hair. “I won’t. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. I was just unsure if you were still on the beach during that storm.”

A sniffle. “I was swimming. You should have waited for me, Yifan… I told you that I would come back and would come to your room when I was done.”

“I know,” Yifan sighs, ashamed of himself and his own impatience and worry. “I was worried about you. I should have trusted you more. What were you doing swimming during a storm, anyway? Don’t you know that you could be struck by lightning?”

Falling quiet, the boy’s hands slacken against his back as his pulse begins to calm and his nerves begin to dull, being pressed against the love of his life proving to be the best stress relief. “I had to take care of something,” he responds. “I… I had to go back for my old mate… and I had to move them from the wreck and bury them. Nobody sent a search party for them, Yifan, did you know that? Nobody cared that he died, that… that _I_ killed him… I didn’t want him to think that he had been forgotten… because I’m scared that I will be forgotten when I die, too…” 

Sighing, the man realizes just how big of a mistake he’s made. Despite knowing very well that Yifan has feelings for him, the nymph is fragile inside, constantly walking an emotional tightrope and never knowing if he may fall to his demise. “I will never forget you, Tao,” he promises as he slides a warm palm comfortingly up the boy’s back, brushing slowly and languidly beneath the blanket. “I promise that I will always be here, okay?”

Weak and tiny, the boy peeks up at him from his spot against his shirt, and Yifan looks down to meet those glassy, dampened eyes, deep and cobalt blue in the calm darkness. “You promise?”

Dating a nixie is much different than dating a human, and Yifan does have moments where he’s not sure if he can manage to be responsible for a twenty-year-old water nymph with the mindset of an early adolescent. Nevertheless, the boy constantly proves to be far too tender-hearted and honest for Yifan to break the trust that he holds for him, and therefore, he manages to constantly find the patience for someone like him. “I promise,” he gives him a gentle smile, a warm hand coming up and threading through the boy’s pale hair. “Okay?”

Happy, the boy nods in his spot against Yifan’s pillow, and he accepts the slow, soft kiss brushed against his lips. 

“The next time you do something stupid like that again,” the boy tells him through pouted lips, “I’m going to freeze your water pipes and leave you without a shower to use.”


End file.
